Hoping to appease privacy advocates who've come down hard on its data retention policies, Google has made a practically meaningless change to its cookie policy.
The world's most popular search engine will soon issue browser cookies that automatically expire if you don't come back to the site for two years.
El Reg estimates …

Re: I don't get it.

I have to agree with Matt here, I really don't see any problems with Cookies having a long life span as after all everyone using the site should be aware of them by now and getting rid of them is quite a simple matter so the onus should really be with how long the user feels like keeping them.

As for search data, again it's something we all know about and the majority of search engines do it after all they're a business and information like that allows them to sell themselves better so again the choice is really with us to either deal with that or not use them.

Do you use gmail?

If you are signed up for gmail or any of the other google services, you presumably have logged in at some point and so they know who you (said you) are. If you use adsense they know your address and financial information. They potentially have a history of everything you search for, at what time, where from, etc.

Re: Do you use gmail?

You could say the same about most internet email providers though, look at Microsoft and Hotmail. Have you got a Windows Live account tied to your Hotmail address, any Microsoft certifications linked in to that. Where ever you go online there is always a trace, it's just Google seems to be slightly more honest about it that some other companies.

Re: I don't get it.

Well everything about you, from medical compaints to what car you own. With Google Checkout, Maps, and Email the situation is even worse than AOL was. it doesn't take a genious to build up a profile about someone.

http://data.aolsearchlogs.com/finding/by_rating.cgi

"his user has problems with their toyota emmissions, has recently lost a dog and would like to know "cause of death in dog with sudden vomiting and rectal bleeding", is curious about "vaginal itching and itchy bumps" and whose house seems to be falling apart with "why cold water won't fill in clothes washer","clogged toilet lines" and "how to repair pin hole leak in water line". They also toy with the idea of some "nude males" and "free porn" with little luck.

Google's Cookie

Apparently, Google stores a unique identifier in the cookie in addition to search preferences. This means search terms are(/could be) distinguishable between individuals above and beyond the extent which a possibly-shared IP address allows.

For the paranoid, instructions for avoiding the cookie are here (unverified, I'm not that bothered personally): http://www.google-watch.org/cgi-bin/cookie.htm

Oh No...

Delete your cookies

Just delete your cookies frequently and it's a bit harder for them to see what you're doing. I've got Firefox set to delete all cookies every session so as it crashes every week or so, I get to clear the cookies fairly regularly. I've never set preferences so I'm happy with it on defaults for the most part.

Who's watching you?

Given that I don't tend to want to re-visit search results once I've found what I'm looking for, why does Google apparently need to be able to know what I searched for yesterday or last week or last year?

Will this allow others to monitor what I've searched for? Well, yes it could.

Let's say I'm engaged in a discussion about terrorism in a chat forum, so I look up Bin Laden and Bomb Making and Glasgow and Propane and so on...

John Law demands Google hand over information on searches and maybe this time they make the subpoena stick (remember Google only refused to obey the previous one because "it might reveal proprietory algorithms" not because it was a breach of Civil Rights!) and "Oho! We've got a terrorists suspect here...!"

Stuff

Most of the people that complain about the cookies would complain if google lost their preferences every week. I mean, I'd get annoyed if I had to turn "safe search" off every few days again. But I don't really see the need for having a cookie for 2 years. 6 months and have it self extending? Sure, makes sense to me.

Google's policies have their uses

I was quite amazed the first time I saw my search history on my iGoogle profile pages. Every single search, every single site I've ever visited, from home or from work, all indexed and itemised by date and time, was there. Scary stuff...

However, because of it, I was able to locate several web pages I had read a couple of months previously, and needed to refer to again in order to win an argument I was having at the time. I'd neglected to bookmark the pages or StumbleUpon vote them, so having Google record my Internet history in this case proved a boon.

No doubt of course Google have access to all of this, and would be able to build an extremely detailed profile on me, which I don't really like the idea of - but then, given that I am just one of however many hundred million people using Google, can they really be arsed doing this? The best they can do is write an algorithm that looks at what I search for and the sites I visit, and post Google ads based on that.

I say "would" because that would be if I didn't have AdBlock Plus running under Firefox as a well as ruleset on my router blocking most major ad servers. I actually can't remember the last time I even saw an ad on the Internet (whoops - I did, on one site a couple of weeks ago a single banner ad slipped through and was on my screen for all of three seconds before I AdBlocked it.) So even if Google do profile me, their advertising isn't going to reach me anyway. Add to that the fact that I frequently pepper my searches with outlandish queries like "bomb making instructions" and "iguana mating rituals" just to see what comes up, and the profile isn't even an accurate representation of my lifestyle or interests. (Incidentally, that's how I first found the Reg - it came up in response to my search for "vulture breeding information"!)

Call yourselves paranoid?

"I've got Firefox set to delete all cookies every session so as it crashes every week or so, I get to clear the cookies fairly regularly."

'Every week or so' is not even 'fairly' regularly. Every few minutes is regularly.

I use FF's 'clear private data' (Ctrl+Shift+Del) virtually every time I change a page and I have FF set to delete all private data at closing. If using webmail I close FF, Stephen Gould's 'CleanUp!', then re-open to continue browsing. (In fact, I use Gould's 'CleanUp!' a lot).

Another example (above)

"I'd get annoyed if I had to turn 'safe search' off every few days again." Convenience (or laziness) triumphing over security? I mean just how onerous is changeing the search preference in Google?

Changing a preference on a serverside app means another cookie so I use FF's delete private data immediately after any session which places cookies (which might mean half-a-dozen times an hour).

Also, because my ISP allocates dynamic IP addresses, I tend to break the connection fairly frequently during the day (takes only a few seconds to re-connect) which slightly inhibits Google establishing a direct linkage between search sessions.

I don't search for porn: I don't run scams: I'm not planning to kill anyone or blow up parliament. In fact, I've got nothing to hide. But that's besides the point: I value my privacy and I'm prepared to suffer a few minutes daily inconvenience to retain some of it.

If I wanted to do anything nasty online (which I don't) I'd at least go to the trouble of doing it from behind Tor or using a public computer (in a town away from my home area).

As for Google "doing no evil" and being a cuddly outfit run by groovy laid-back hipsters Serge and Larry... what utter bollocks! Google is a huge, aggressively-acquisitive, rapidly-expanding, information-hoarding multinational corporation. The less a commercial entity like that knows about me, the better.